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TheShawv

Ballistae broken

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Any chance the Ballistae can be fixed? It says fires like a catapult, lowering the angle shots farther, the darts take 50-75 damage fired once, the messages you get befor firing - say will fire 2 tiles at this angle and they shoot over 20. No skill for firing the machine and good luck hitting anything with it. Totally useless machine, but a good concept. It needs fixed - revamped.

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Those machines are called war machines for a reason. Their non military use in PvE is mainly in demolition (catapults, rams). I am not sure about any civilian use either of ballistae, or even less of trebuchets. Mind that most of those offensive or defensive war equipment and associated skill (traps, lightning/fire turrets, archery towers etc.) has either no effect in PvE, is widely decorative, or cannot even trained (like stealing), or only under very restrictive conditions (like lockpicking).

 

Skill gain on ballistae, like on catapults and battering rams, seems to be based on damage dealt. Without hitting anything no skill gain therefore. While catapults and rams are useful in demolition so give some skill albeit slowly, the only way to make a ballista do damage would possibly be penning or hitching a creature and firing at it.

 

On low skill, the results are expected to be widely random and disappointing no less than with catapults and rams (prolly worse). Just train, figure minimum firing range to get halfways reliable outcome. Care for even ground for your device when firing. Have a number of creatures to be hitched or penned as victims of your training. Do not expect fast progress. As I was told (when complaining about my detrimental catapult success, now in the 8 range), catapult training is done best on kind of military training ground on deed, with many small houses so that you hit even if your shot goes wrong. Similarly, it might be necessary to place a larger number of victims until your skill gets better.

 

If you get a message that "something went wrong .. blah .." it means you failed the skill check. That will be default outcome in  the beginning. Note which firing range gives least of those failures and stick to it as there is always outcome = (skill check)+-rng so there is a chance albeit small. Your success will grow over time. And ballista dart repairing and imping will raise your fletching skills.

 

Edited by Ekcin
addendum

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Ballistae were overlooked when the parabolic motion update came out, so even though it says it will fire X tiles, it will instead fire 1 tile / winch you do. They are incredibly accurate and do great damage against fences, and they are fairly mobile, since you can pick one up and carry it with you, and the ammo is only 1/2 kg each, I typically take one with me when exploring other servers by cart, in order to break down decaying fences easily.

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First, thanks to Shydow for those explanations, I did not know.

 

Second, I think it is sufficiently argued that there is no bug in ballistae behaviour. I would suggest to close the topic or move it to suggestions if the thread starter likes to add remarks to how he thinks ballistae mechanic should be changed.

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They are still bugged, in that the estimated firing distance is showing up wrong.

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I appreciate the response if totally misguided. You obviously do not live on a pvp server so referring to thievery skill , lock picking skill , 8 catapult skill?  The revamp missed a few things in the way Ballistae should work if you are referring to how the trajectory should work and how it is coded in Wurm.

 

The thing i was missing was the 1 crank=1 tile formula instead of what the game reports as firing distance. Broken and confusing but workable like most things in Wurm.

 

Thank you Shydow for that info i will try it again and see what i can make use of. No need to move this to a suggestion thread since it need a bit of attention, like proper distance reporting. Also 70 damage per shot is a bit much since all other ammo shot from a war machine takes 20ish.

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